Republican Mike Coffman and Democrat Andrew Romanoff. (The Denver Post)
Democratic challenger Andrew Romanoff is pushing back against speculation he’s failing to catch fire in his campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman.
First came weeks of judgments from national pundits who speculated that the Republican-leaning climate this year was one factor keeping Romanoff from catching fire. Last week, Politico among much-hyped congressional candidates this year. And on Friday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which spent $1.8 million on the race in recent weeks, for the final two weeks. Instead, it shifted its spending to rescue Democratic incumbents in other states — a potentially ominous sign for Romanoff, as Republicans crowed.
But the signs aren’t all bad for Romanoff in the race, which has been seen as the state’s most competitive congressional contest despite a lack of public polling.
For one thing, he at the start of the month, with $900,000 in ad slots reserved for the rest of the campaign up to the Nov. 4 election. And this week, the Democrats’ House Majority PAC began running a $551,000 placement of featuring an often-repeated message about Coffman’s past support for personhood ballot measures. (Coffman’s campaign points out the ad buy was reserved well before this week.)
On Tuesday, Romanoff’s campaign floated an internal poll — the first released by either side during the general election campaign — that showed Romanoff trailing Coffman by 1 percentage point, well within the margin of error. The limited information provided by the campaign showed the poll had a party registration breakdown for the sample that seemed to mirror other polling this season, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats.
“The latest numbers confirm what we’ve known all along: This race is a dead heat,” said Denise Baron, Romanoff’s campaign spokeswoman. “Mike Coffman and the out-of-state interest groups that back him have spent millions of dollars attempting to tear Andrew apart. Their strategy hasn’t worked — and it won’t.”
Coffman’s campaign declined to talk about its internal polling results, while questioning Romanoff’s numbers.
“We always knew this race to be close, and we’re not taking anything for granted,” said Tyler Sandberg, Coffman’s campaign manager. “Mike Coffman is going to win this race. … Team Coffman is just going to keep working hard, while Andrew Romanoff spends time and campaign money on polls that appear to have been commissioned from the back room of the dollar store.”
